It’s important not to conflate two uses of the word “trust”—you can trust someone’s judgment, trust them not to be malicious, neither, or both. “Bad decisions” and “lapses in personal judgement” are perfectly consistent, if not potentially supportive, of not trusting someone’s judgment.
It’s tough to be”high-trust” at the top levels of a movement without also being “low-accountability.” Low accountability has its harms too, especially when it comes to relations with non-EAs (or those who are not yet EAs) who are outside of the high-trust community. For those people, you have to show, not only tell, that you are trustworthy and reliable. The significance of this cost depends on what you think EA should be and will be in the future. To me, saying that FTX was n=1 goes both ways; you can’t count on major funders who become EAs, accept the community of trust, and then get really wealthy. So being seen as at least moderately trustworthy in the public eye is important; that requires things like proactively providing an explanation for why having a significant portion of your organization’s assets tied up in a $15MM manor house is a good idea.
My own view is that most of the calls for greater transparency etc. have been directed at major decisions of significant organizations and/or methods that are relatively low cost. In addition, some of it has called for a wider circle of transparency rather than more work per se. Returning to Wytham Abbey, EVF clearly had to justify the decision to Open Phil to get the $15MM, so the costs of proactively releasing the business case for that expenditure should have been very low cost. I think some of the negative reactions are to the idea that organizations need to be accountable/responsible to big donors but not smaller ones & rank-and-file EAs. That this reduces morale and makes people feel like they have less of a voice is unsurprising to me.
It’s important not to conflate two uses of the word “trust”—you can trust someone’s judgment, trust them not to be malicious, neither, or both. “Bad decisions” and “lapses in personal judgement” are perfectly consistent, if not potentially supportive, of not trusting someone’s judgment.
It’s tough to be”high-trust” at the top levels of a movement without also being “low-accountability.” Low accountability has its harms too, especially when it comes to relations with non-EAs (or those who are not yet EAs) who are outside of the high-trust community. For those people, you have to show, not only tell, that you are trustworthy and reliable. The significance of this cost depends on what you think EA should be and will be in the future. To me, saying that FTX was n=1 goes both ways; you can’t count on major funders who become EAs, accept the community of trust, and then get really wealthy. So being seen as at least moderately trustworthy in the public eye is important; that requires things like proactively providing an explanation for why having a significant portion of your organization’s assets tied up in a $15MM manor house is a good idea.
My own view is that most of the calls for greater transparency etc. have been directed at major decisions of significant organizations and/or methods that are relatively low cost. In addition, some of it has called for a wider circle of transparency rather than more work per se. Returning to Wytham Abbey, EVF clearly had to justify the decision to Open Phil to get the $15MM, so the costs of proactively releasing the business case for that expenditure should have been very low cost. I think some of the negative reactions are to the idea that organizations need to be accountable/responsible to big donors but not smaller ones & rank-and-file EAs. That this reduces morale and makes people feel like they have less of a voice is unsurprising to me.